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From the author of the award winning Devil in a Blue Dress comes a short story rife with mystery and suspense, an enthralling introduction to the complex protagonist Leonid McGill.
When Walter Mosley published the first Leonid McGill novel, The Long Fall—the acclaimed New York Times bestseller that is now being developed as a series for HBO—it was clear that this new hero was a man with a past. He was a private investigator who had “decided to go from crooked to slightly bent,” turning down the shady but lucrative work that New York’s thugs and mobsters had long brought to his door. In Karma, Walter Mosley tells us the story of the moment McGill decided to change his ways, when a seemingly classic femme fatale forced him to confront the reality of his life of corruption and betrayal. It was the culmination of a dark and tragic case that reached back through McGill’s entire career, plumbing the full, complex history of the soul-scarred figure now hailed as “a poignantly real character . . . [and] a more than worthy successor to Philip Marlowe.” (The Boston Globe) Originally published in Otto Penzler’s anthology Dangerous Women, Karma was included in Best American Mystery Stories 2006, edited by Scott Turow.
Walter Mosley
Walter Mosley is one of America’s most celebrated writers. He was given the 2020 National Book Award’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and honored with the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a Grammy, a PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, the Robert Kirsch Award, numerous Edgars and several NAACP Image Awards. He is the author of more than sixty critically acclaimed books that cover a wide range of ideas, genres, and forms including fiction (literary, mystery, and science fiction), political monographs, writing guides including Elements of Fiction, a memoir in paintings, and the young adult novel 47. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages. He has published fiction and nonfiction in The New Yorker, Playboy, and The Nation. As an executive producer, he adapted his novel, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, for AppleTV+ and serves as a writer and executive producer for FX’s Snowfall.
In 2020 he was a recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and from the National Book Foundation. In 2013, he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, and he is the winner of numerous awards, including an Edgar Award, an O. Henry Award, the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award, PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award, a Grammy Award, and several NAACP Image Awards. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages.
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